John Vieira has been working seriously in poetry and in visual-verbal
(and other related) arts for the past 30
years, with part of his work over this time, both lyric and experimental,
appearing as numerous chapbooks.

He has given readings of his
poems at many different venues—for instance, in New York City art galleries, at
festivals on both the east and west coasts including several of the annual
"Lowell Celebrates Kerouac" festivals in Lowell, Massachusetts (including
with accompaniment by David Amram),
at festivals in the South Pacific, at a "Poets Against
the War" Washington, DC Reading for Peace & Justice, in bars in Boston, Cambridge
(MA), and Washington, DC, at Adams House at Harvard University, at The Writer's
Center in DC, and at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church (NYC). [Artist
photo: Susan Cassabon.]

A lengthy essay entitled "Ecstatic Writing: An
Appeal for the Reclamation of Poetry" appeared (in 1998) in The Bitter Oleander (vol. 4, no. 1), and
was nominated for the 1999 Pushcart Prize. (The essay was reprinted in Japan in 2006 in Bongos of the Lord #20.)

Listed in A Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers
(New York: Poets & Writers, Inc., 2003) and Contemporary Authors
(Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007), an entry on his career with a
specimen of work appears in R. Kostelanetz, et al., A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, 2nd edition (New York: Schirmer
Books, 2000).

Since the 1970s, in addition
to utilizing his photographs in his broader work, John has also involved
himself with shooting straight photography, working almost exclusively with analog
instant film (Polaroid, Impossible Project, Fuji). His
work was part of the historic open group show "SELF-PORTRAITR" at the
Pace/MacGill Gallery in Midtown Manhattan, Summer 2006—with two of his
photos, "Portrait: The Light #1" and "Urban Self-portrait",
selected as gallery favorites. To see some mini-portfolios go to: biographies, or Saatchi Online.

John was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, and educated at parochial and
private schools there. (B.A. with honors, BostonCollege.)

Currently he lives—with Cindy Schaller, his wife of many
years—in the Washington, DC area and in Manhattan, continuing to work and write
(and, for a "living", freelancing as a broadcast archivist, mostly in
television news). Besides DC and NYC, John has also lived on Kauai in Hawaii (and journeyed to other, more
remote areas in the South Pacific), in the hills of northern California, and in various places in New England.